Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) provide computer system users with a visual and intuitive means for interacting with the computer system. One common type of GUI element is the menu. Menus present lists of items—such as commands, attributes, or states—from which a user can choose. There are various forms of menus, such as pull-down menus, pop-up menus, and contextual menus. FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a prior art pull-down menu 102. A pull-down menu is a type of menu that typically appears directly beneath a selected object. Examples of pull-down menus are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,464,652 and 4,931,783. Pull-down menus are typically accessed via a menu bar 106, which may be a menu bar for an entire display or a menu bar for a window where several windows may have their own menu bars. A menu bar is typically a horizontally oriented menu, but can also be vertically or otherwise linearly oriented. Each menu option (or menu title) in the menu bar is generally associated with its own respective pull-down menu that appears when the associated menu title is selected. A menu bar 106 typically includes a plurality of menu titles (e.g. 104,105), one for each menu accessible from the menu bar 106. In the example illustrated, the pull-down menu 102 is displayed in response to a user having selected a menu title 104 (“Finder”) from the menu bar 106 to access the menu 102. The menu 102 includes a plurality of menu items 108, 112. Menu item 112 typically only includes one line of text, referred to as the menu item title. Each menu item may represent a command, attribute or state that may be invoked upon the selection and activation or initiation of the corresponding menu item. For example, if a user desired to delete files within the Trash (a folder of files designated for deletion), the user would choose the menu item 112 corresponding to the “Empty Trash” command. Thus, in the example illustrated by FIG. 1, the menu item title 113 for menu item 112 is “Empty Trash . . . ”.
The menu item 112 is illustrated as being highlighted to indicate its status as being currently selected. Thus, as a user navigates through the items in the menu 102, each item is highlighted as it is respectively selected. A highlighted menu item, such as item 112 in FIG. 1, typically only indicates the currently selected item, and does not necessarily indicate that a command associated with the selected item has been activated (i.e. an additional command, such as clicking the item with a mouse or pressing the Enter key, is necessary to execute the action of the menu item). Some menu items, such as menu item 114, appear dimmed (gray) with respect to the other menu items 108, 112, to indicate that the menu item 114 is not available for selection. When certain conditions of the system change, the item 114 may become available for activation, and thus would appear enabled.
Menu items displayed within menus, such as items 108 and 112, are generally static objects; other than perhaps becoming highlighted when selected, or dimmed when unavailable, the text, icons or content presented within the menu items generally does not change while the menu is being displayed. One exception exists in some computing systems, in which commands or items displayed within a menu change when the user presses a modifier key while viewing the menu; such items are referred to as dynamic menu items. However, to view these dynamic menu items, a user is required to perform an additional step (i.e. pressing a modifier key). Further, the different set of menu items available when the modifier key is pressed are nonetheless a predetermined set of menu items, which once displayed, remain static. Additionally, some menus include toggled menu items, which change between two states each time a user chooses it, such a checkmark adjacent to a menu item to indicate a current state of an object associated with the menu item (e.g. active or inactive). Thus, for the most part, menus and the items within them typically represent static objects presenting predetermined information.
Further, to conserve screen space and to minimize screen clutter, many menu items such as menu item 112 consist of short textual descriptions or icons. While these short descriptions are often satisfactory for clearly conveying the commands that may be invoked upon selection of these menu items, the limited space available within the menu 102 may make it difficult to convey more detailed information associated with a menu item. Scrolling text within a window or portion of a window has provided more information to a user than would be allowed if only static text were displayed in the window or portion of the window. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,262,724.